


A table at the wedding

by imsfire



Series: Fragments from the multiverse [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Feels, Fluff, Gen, also Mon Mothma and Admiral Ackbar, and flirting, drunk wedding dancing, happiness, minor appearances by Threepio and Artoo, not a story for teetotallers, rated T for descriptions of drunkeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: It seems none of the Rogues are entirely comfortable with a formal wedding dinner, but they all start to relax when they've had enough champagne.





	A table at the wedding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gloriouswhisperstyphoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/gifts), [TinCanTelephone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinCanTelephone/gifts).



> Inspired by a completely daft exchange of messages with @gloriouswhisperstyphoon and @tincantelephone yesterday morning.  
> Unbeta'd, written in a hurry, no plot at all and altogether silly, but I hope you'll enjoy it!

“We shouldn’t have been put here,” Jyn hisses. “We’re near the front.  It’s not right.”

Her neighbour leans down a little to answer.  Okay, perhaps more than a little.  Cassian has had a few drinks and his hair is in a mess, his collar open, his eyes mild and smiling. “Not right? - how?”

“Up here it should be – close friends.  We ought to be on the back table.”

At least she’s not so drunk as to say _family_.  The groom has none and the bride has only her brother.  Besides Han and Leia, and Luke acting as best man to both bride and groom, the top table is occupied by Chewie, Mothma and Admiral Ackbar, and Threepio embarrassedly passing dishes to and fro.

“Would you like some more of the Rugulian risotto, Admiral?  I hear its flavour is very appetising?  Oh, oh, the platter’s slipping, somebody help!”

A whistle of rude binary, and a small grabber-arm comes up from under the tablecloth and rescues him.  Ackbar laughs affectionately.

“We are close friends, aren’t we?” says Chirrut. “Baze and I spend time with Luke and Leia every day, and so do you, Jyn.”

“We just beat each other up, that’s all.”

“Sparring practise helps people bond.”

“But do we even need to bond anymore?  We’re not an army now.” She looks around the formal dining chamber and the tables of slightly-awkward or blithely unbothered people, all the familiar faces, all the other familiar faces that aren’t here, can’t be here, all the emotions that run high and must be held down and tethered by the strongest durasteel today.  Because this is a formal wedding, a sit-down celebration meal with eight courses and wine, and silverware she’d feel more at ease using as weaponry. 

She grabs and drains her glass of dark red coast wine.

“Hush, don’t be unhappy.” Cassian, leaning in again.  He smells good, she notices, and she tries not to lean in too.  Herb soap in his hair and on his skin, wine and lemons and kaf on his breath, and an undernote of fresh perspiration that shouldn’t be as delicious as it is.  His eyes are so full of concern and kindness, she could simply fall into their brown warmth. 

Jyn is still trying to think of a sensible answer, one that she can find all the words for, when dessert arrives.  And then the champagne.

**

The sit-down meal is over, guests are moving about, pushing back chairs and strolling around to talk to friends and acquaintances at other tables.  But the wine is still flowing.  Bodhi had been abstemious at first, since he very seldom drinks.  But when he realised the first taste of wine wasn’t going to his head he relaxed, and he’s enjoyed a couple more glasses since then.  It might be three, now.  It’s delicious sparkling stuff, served chilled; from some bottles it flows pale as ice and from others rose-pink like a sunrise.  It tastes more like a dry sherbet or a home-made grape soda than alcohol, and the bubbles tickle his nose.

“This is, this is, lovely stuff,” he tells Jyn.

“Yeah.”

He holds the glass up again for a refill.  Baze smiles wryly, hefting the huge bottle as though it were a teacup. “Here you go, little brother.”

“Thank you.” Bringing it back towards himself he notices how the light refracts through it. “That’s pretty.” It makes distorted flattened shapes and he can imagine them like a sunset and a terrace with a fence and clouds dancing in a high pink sky. “I can see a, like a, picture, in the side of the glass.”

Jyn holds up her own glass and squints at it.  He sees her raise an eyebrow at Cassian; then slowly start to blush as the Major winks at her with both eyes.  Or maybe the blush is from the rosy wine.  He peers closer into the distortions, the rising chains of bubbles in the goblet. “Maybe this is a new, a, a new method of divination.  Chirrut, you could teach it to Luke.  Or, no, maybe Baze could, sorry.  Reading champagne bubbles.  Oh.  Now I can’t anymore.  Read them I mean. No more bubbles!”

Baze refills the empty glass. “Don’t drink this one yet, the toasts are starting.”

“Toast?  Oh no, I can’t eat another thing.”

But then Luke stands up at the next table and starts to speak.  Luke is gentle and shy as a public speaker, but his love for his sister and his best friend shines off him like sunlight.  Everything about Luke is like sunlight.  He’s so bright.  He illuminates things.  He keeps them, keeps on keeping them, all alive.  That’s three things straight away (or is it four?).  And he’s the colour of sunlight, too, or at least his hair is.  His family name should have been Sunhair.  Or Sunhairer.  Sunhairier?  Something like that.  Sun-coloured hair and lashes, and eyes the colour of the sky.

“So please raise your glasses with me and let’s drink to the long and happy lives of Han and Leia!”

Everyone raises their glasses and repeats “Han and Leia”, and drinks.  Bodhi is a note behind the rest of the table, saying the “a” of Leia alone as all the others are already drinking.  He empties his glass in embarrassment and plonks it down.  Maybe he has had enough.  But someone – not Baze, this time, Chirrut, surely he can trust Chirrut to have his back? – refills it.

He picks it up and blinks into the golden world of bubbles and distances.  It’s a vision, something out of a dream, really, so beautiful.  Sparkling, full of light.  It makes him blink, the beauty, the dazzling light.  There are rainbows all around him, all round his eyes; but when he blinks, a feathering like black pine boughs sweeps down over his shining dream kingdom in the goblet, and wipes it away.

“Jyn…” He blinks again.  Sweep, sweep.  It isn’t a floating pine tree, nor a curtain of black feathers, it’s – “I can see my eyelashes…”

“Can you then?” says Jyn.  There’s a laugh hiding in her voice somewhere.

“I can.  They’re beautiful, look –“ he waves the glass of wine in her direction.

“Yes, Bodhi, we know.” Cassian leans away from Jyn for the first time in a while and bends into Bodhi’s focus.  He’s smiling and he reaches out and takes the glass, sets it down on the table. “Carefully there, huh?”

“But they’re so long!  They’re, like, I’ve got wings inside my head.  And the table-lamps make rainbows in them.”

He looks up, blinking and smiling at his friends, and is suddenly terribly aware that, oh no oh dear oh _damn_ , he _is_ drunk after all.  Because none other than Luke Sunny-hair is skywalking towards him all shiny in his new best suit and if Bodhi’s lashes are long then Luke’s are a flight of hummingbirds, the leaves of flowering trees, how does he even see past them they are curtains of gold –

Luke’s shy smile turns puzzled and then worried, and he suddenly bends to grab up a knife from the table and squint at his reflection in it.

“I’ve got something in my eye?” he says anxiously. “Is that what you meant, Bo-Commander Rook?”

He said it.  Out loud, he said it out loud “I said it out loud?” Oh dear.  “But yes,” because he can’t leave Luke looking so worried like that and it’s better that he embarrass himself than embarrass the man who – the man he – this beautiful brave man - “I just mean, how do you see out of your eyes when your lashes are so long and thick like gold.  Like gold swans’ wings.”

“They are?” Luke tries to look at his reflection in the nearest empty bottle.

“No, no, that won’t work, you can see a new world _through_ the bottles, just like through the glasses, but, but, I don’t think you’ll see yourself _in_ there.”

Sweet Force alive, how did he get this close to Luke Skywalker?  And on a day when he’s drunk, too, how silly.  Why, he might do _anything_. “Were your eyes always this blue?”

 “Uhhh I think so?” Luke doesn’t sound entirely certain.  He pulls out a chair and sits down, looking helplessly at Bodhi as if it’s only by studying him that he has a hope of understanding the miracles of the Force and all the universe.  A look of surprise steals over his face and he says “Bodhi, you have such huge eyes” in the tone of someone remarking on a phenomenon never before observed.

That has to be good, right?  Luke doesn’t mind him tipsy.  Luke is bending in.  His aftershave is a leafy spicy scent.  Or maybe it’s just him. “Did you always smell this good???”

Jyn and Cassian are looking at them both.  She’s still smiling but if Bodhi didn’t know better he’d describe Cassian’s expression as a classic _wtf_ look.  Chirrut serenely refills everyone’s goblets.

“I _smell_?” says Luke.  His nose twitches as he surreptitiously lifts an arm slightly.  Bodhi reassures him, smiling with happiness at the progress they’re making; look at him, talking to Luke Skywalker, and Luke talking to him.  All is well.

“No, Luke, you smell _good,_ there's a difference.”

There’s a slow pause before Luke suddenly smiles too. “What does good smell like?”

“Like you…”

“But what do I smell like?”

“Good.”

Jyn says “You people are going in circles” She still sounds amused.  Happy, even.  Everything’s alright then.   Luke is smiling, everyone’s smiling.  Another bottle of champagne stands empty.

Circles.  That reminds him of - “Hey, great idea, we should - should - dance!”

**

Jyn leans over the table towards them.  She’s on her third glass of the excellent champagne and she’s pretty sure the others have all drunk more than her.  Why, she’s probably the most sober person at this table!  She catches sight of her reflection in the silver vase of the centrepiece and there’s real laughter in her eyes.  Her hair is a little dishevelled.  She remembers Luke tried to look at himself just now in the blade of a cake-knife and laughs out loud. “Dancing, yeah, go on!  Luke’s here to partner you.  I’m sure you can think of a nice ‘dance’ the two of you could do together.”

Chirrut beams, Baze’s eyes widen and then crinkle in hilarity.  Cassian pulls her close – oho, we’re doing the hugging thing are we, Captain? – and says “Jyn, no, there are children present!” which is a hoot as the only children are **not** at their table.

Their table of, oh dear, really very tipsy people.  Including herself.  She’s not ashamed of it.  But it’s probably going to be awkward, especially as she would really rather like to dance.  And Bodhi is waving everyone to get up.

Luke is a little behind the curve.  Though he’s also got a wine glass now.  And he seems relaxed enough that he must have had a good amount already.  Maybe he was nervous about his speechmaking, Force knows she can sympathise if so.  But he’s still sitting down, staring up at Bodhi and grinning bashfully, while she and Cassian both push back their seats and help one another up.  Oh yes, definitely tight. 

Krif it, who gives a krif, who gives a single dancing krif up the shabs - “Hey, Luke, are you gonna join us?  Let’s all dance with Bodhi.”

It turns out there isn’t room for the dance Bodhi has in mind, and with that same look of contained hilarity Baze marshals them into moving the entire table back.  People are staring.  Leia, up at the top table, is laughing and urging her brother on.  Chewie roars his approval.  She thinks it’s approval.  Another tableful of guests throw all caution aside and also start hauling furniture and preparing to dance.  Good.  **_Good._**   A riot, the best possible way to end a too-posh wedding.

“Everyone, get in couples,” Bodhi shouts.  He’s blushing a sweet ripe red but he seems full of energy and unafraid. “I’m going to teach you a wedding dance.  Circle dance.  Hug your partners close with one arm and put the other arm out and grab someone else.  In a circle.  That’s right.  Circle, in a circle.” It’s chaos.  Jyn can’t stop laughing now she’s got started, it’s spilling out of her like a river down a hillside.  Cassian has tucked her under his shoulder and is hugging onto her tightly, and when she glances up at him, he’s flushed and warm-eyed, looking down at her.  She knows that look.

_Oh, okay, this is good, I can cope with this._

They both flap blindly for another hand to hold, as a disorderly circle forms; couples locked lovingly together, gazing at one another, with flailing free arms trying to link up to the next pair along.  There’s another scrawp of steel on tile as the top table is also dragged back, and Luke whoops as the bride and groom join in. 

Jyn’s free hand is caught by Admiral Ackbar.  He’s hugging Chewbacca. 

The whole tangle of happy sentients lurches in time to the polite piped music and begins to circle round, with Han and Leia holding on to one another in the middle, laughing and kissing and crying with happiness.

There’s a lot of laughing, and kissing, and crying.

“This is how to have a party,” Jyn shouts up to Cassian. “Not that stupid sit-down formal stuff.  This.”

He just smiles; and bends to her lips, and kisses her, dancing.


End file.
